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Tuesday headlines: MMA and drug testing
By Zach Arnold | July 2, 2007
Well, no title unification on September 8th in London for Quinton Jackson vs. Dan Henderson. Interesting manuever that UFC is not pushing the PRIDE belts. Sounds to me like UFC will not be recognizing either of Henderson’s PRIDE title belts. Reminds me of yesteryear in 1991 when Ric Flair came into WWE with “the real world’s heavyweight championship” and they blurred the belt on television. I just had to work that wrestling reference in.
Speaking of wrestling, that whole issue of drug testing… it is an issue in MMA circles, too. The New York Times elaborates.
K-1 has rescheduled the date of their Hong Kong event at the Asia World-Expo Arena for August 5th. Choi Hong-Man is announced to face Gary Goodridge. What will the California State Athletic Commission have to say about this? K-1 also announced a date of September 29th for a show in Seoul at the Olympic Gym #1.
The folks at NHB News (Japanese) have been doing some dirt-digging in regards to what is happening with PRIDE activity. It’s interesting to say the least.
- PRIDE FC Worldwide LLC is supposedly owned by PRIDE FC Worldwide Japan LLC, which has Zuffa attorney Jamie Pollack as a representative. It is noted that the LLC is an American company, meaning it can be shut down at any time.
- Nobuyuki Sakakibara’s resignation as CEO of DSE officially happened on April 20th, with DSE changing its corporate purpose to ‘handling money.’ In short, not doing operation business.
- In discussion about Sakakibara’s new sports management project, there is chatter from the bloggers about the connections to Ubon (which is the company Sakakibara owned under his PRIDE reign). Plus, the bloggers discuss connections between Ubon and Hustle Entertainment (with Noboru Yamaguchi as the public face). The connection supposedly is a shared address.
- Ubon supposedly did production work for Gackt! concepts (Shukan Gendai had claimed last year that Gackt! was supposedly tied in by Mr. I’s talent management company, Circus Circus).
- The Japanese bloggers discuss the relationship between Hiroyuki Kato (director of DSE) and a company called Marble Eyes (a company allegedly close to Sakakibara).
Check out the video online of fights from the Anno Domini 2 event.
Onto today’s headlines.
- The Houston Chronicle: IFL wins a round with shareholders
- 411 Mania: Competitive balance in MMA?
- Yahoo Sports: Floyd Mayweather Jr. vacates the WBC super welterweight title
- Prophet Fighting: Daniel Puder signs with BodogFight, will a rematch with Angle be in store?
- UFC Mania: Dana White says Shogun and Fedor will get title shots
- Sports Illustrated (Todd Martin): Foreign Invasion
- Buddy TV: Interview with Rashad Evans
- The Canadian Press: MMA scorecard – a judge’s inside look at how he rates fights
- Komikazee: Ken Shamrock – It ain’t over ’til it’s over
- Jake Rossen: Premature thoughts on UFC 73
- Sprawl ‘n Brawl: UFC 73 – Franca vs. Sherk
- The Orange County Register: UFC President Dana White, Meet the Press
- Kevin Iole: Pipe dreams for Frank Edgar
- Josh Barnett: A difference between blood and money
- The Orange County Register: A talk with Tito Ortiz
Topics: Boxing, IFL, Media, MMA, PRIDE, UFC, Zach Arnold | 25 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Wasn’t there some CBS Sportsline article about wrestling that should be in these headlines? I think some dude named Arnold? š
Sounds to me like the UFC is keen on burying PRIDE’s legacy. Part of that is to not make the current PRIDE belts up for grabs… if there will be no more PRIDE shows, then what’s the point of promoting its belts?
I for one am glad that it will not be a unification match. Those always end in a double count-out
why the heck would they have hendo fight rampage then?
and why would they constantly refer to hendo as being pride champ?
if hendo wins, then what?
this boggles the mind
So Hendo has to ship his belt back to Atlanta and wear one of the WWF tag belts instead?
I’m sure that Fedor can’t wait to win the UFC Heavyweight Title so that he can REALLY be the #1 heavyweight in the world… (sarcasm intended)
Also, there is no such thing as āPrideā anymore, so Rampage-Henderson is essentially as if Henderson was going to get a shot at the UFC Light Heavyweight Title but now itās a non-title fight instead. Of all the things that the UFC could emulate from Pride, you would think that Prideās ridiculous non-title matches would be the last thing they would want to emulate.
That was a good article with Jeff Mullen talking about MMA judging. They should do a similar article with Dalby Shirley, Abe Belardo, or Glenn Trowbridge to talk about how they play Monopoly, Candy Land, Texas Hold āEm, Blackjack, and a wide variety of other board and card games during MMA and boxing bouts.
As for drug testing, I couldnāt put it better than the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency official did: āHopefully these new sports will recognize that theyāre going to have to face these issues down the road, so they might as well do it now. They have to ask themselves: Are we going to hold on to the true value of sport? Or are we just going to be pure entertainment?ā
Of all the posts you’re going to delete, it’s the one where I call someone a creampuff?
Come on guys, lighten up a little.
Unified titles => Zuffa kills PRIDE
Separate titles => Zuffa resurrects PRIDE
c’mon guys, get with the program already, and stop worrying about a bunch of props.
I have a personal policy (and it’s just mine) — attacking someone’s writing or their comments in terms of substance is fair game. Going after people’s looks are not. I’m not into that. If I didn’t set the tone earlier for this clearly, then I apologize.
That’s cool, it’s your website. Though I do hope you realize that unless I’m talking about Armando Garcia, I’m usally just kidding around.
By the way, could you please stop linking MMA articles from SI.com? Martin and Arash are decent writers and all, but honestly there isnāt a whole lot over there that hasnāt been written here already.
That top 10 piece was especially brutal.
Even if they are scrapping the Pride belts the UFC title needs to be on the line minimum.
“I donāt want to take money out of his familyās mouth and vice versa. ” – Tito Ortiz
I’m with Kev. Not Unifying the belts implies to me that they are atleast considering using/creating Pride in some fashion. If they tried to bring Pride back and one person held a belt there and a belt in the UFC it would cause too much confusion/problems.
They could easily use the PRIDE name and unify the belts. You know, claiming a undisputed world champion and all that jazz. I don’t know how people figure having a bunch of world champions under the same umbrella is better. That’s a very Don King thing to do.
Definitely, I agree with those that also think that if this is not a unification match, that it means that Dana White sees potential in keeping PRIDE around. It means he’s keeping his options open.
In other words, part of the reason of having PRIDE continue to exist is to have their champions compete against UFC champions in an MMA Super Bowl. How the heck would you do that if one guy in the UFC (Jackson or Henderson) has both titles?
Or it could be the fact that Dana wants to make sure that nothing gets in the way of Rampage vs Shogun II being a championship fight.
I really don’t understand why Rampage and Henderson are fighting if it isn’t for the belt. There’s nothing that’s going to be gained by having fight a three round exhibition match.
If Dana had decided to bury PRIDE, this would be a UFC title match – simple as that. He’s not screwing over PRIDE, he’s screwing over the European audience again.
“I really donāt understand why Rampage and Henderson are fighting if it isnāt for the belt. Thereās nothing thatās going to be gained by having fight a three round exhibition match.”
Yeah, I agree, the move is a bit curious. But maybe Zuffa has it’s hands tied at this point. I suspect they may have booked and promoted the matchup without considering all the possibilities of integrating PRIDE with the UFC. I doubt this means that PRIDE is definitely alive, I think its just Zuffa keeping their options open, just in case, while they figure shit out.
Maybe their intention is to really push this has the first “Super Bowl” matchup and have Henderson come out to a lot of pomp and circumstance with both PRIDE belts. If they see a lot of pop for PRIDE afterwards, that might signify an interest in a “competing” promotion to the UFC. If they get a big “Yawwwwwn” from the casual audience, maybe they just kill PRIDE off entirely or move towards keeping it around as an Asian minor league.
The problem with leaving their options open, if indeed that’s the idea, is that if Henderson wins, they’ve totally devalued Jackson as a champ (and thus, any subsequent title changes) and they’ll have a guy with a belt he’s not defending because they may not even bring back PRIDE. If Jackson wins, well, who cares about seeing Henderson defend the light heavyweight title, and what will they think of PRIDE as a result? I mean, I don’t think they need to sit down and wonder what value PRIDE has in the North American market. They can see the buys and listen to the crowd’s non reaction to Henderson, Cro Cop, or Noguiera upon their entrances. The last thing they need to do is force multiple belt holders in order to create an aire of having lots of world title fights on their cards. That’s not playing even remotely to their strong points.
Its really frustrating to see a group of guys who have all the ability in the world to fix things in their sport and know better just completely fuck it all up.
I’m baffled by judging. It’s a mysterious topic and rarely broached. It’s cool to hear from a judge for a change, and I’d like to read and hear more about judging in the future.
To me the only reason the UFC wouldn’t put at least one of the belts on the line is because they intend on continuing to use the PRIDE title in some form or another. Whether it is a full “new” PRIDE or if they simply aren’t sure yet what direction they’re going I think the UFC in sincerely considering bringing PRIDE back
I agree with UFCDaily. However, I am still shaking my head as to why the fuck White would set the match up in the first place. There’d have been a good question for them at the phone conference: “Uh, what’s the point of this fight if it’s not a unification and you’re not pushing it as UFC vs PRIDE?”
I think they just said the Rampage fight will be a title fight.
If it’s not a title fight, then it’s just another in the long line of UFC “Superfights.”
Pride’s title won’t be on the line because Zuffa intends to have their superbowl event after they get Pride back on its feet. It would be pretty bad form to put the title of an organization on the line before you’ve even been able to host one event.
I’m giving you a warning right now about threatening to get his personal info and posting it online. Don’t do it.
I’m closing the comments in this thread for now. Anyone on this site who threatens to go after someone on a personal level is asking to be a goner.